But I am focused in this thread on the potential emotional impact of Trump making the most fine tuned response to the opportunity the Romney attack affords.
Nixon was certainly not a model for Conservatives, but his little dog speech in 1952 was a brilliant moment, of turning adversity to advantage. Rove--for whom I have contempt, not for his character primarily, but for his really pathetic analytic ability--missed a similar opportunity for Bush, when he did not have Bush on TV election eve in 2000, to take advantage of the dirty tactics that put his just after College DUI over the airways the weekend before the election.
That also was a missed historic opportunity, to use a seemingly hostile tactic to tremendous advantage. (The obvious tactic being to spend 2o seconds admitting he made a boyish mistake in his youth, and then try to electrify the enlarged audience with a vision for the future, over the next 28 1/2 minutes.
I know what you mean.
Nixon was an odd guy. A strong anti-communist, he adhered to “free market economics” (just as, supposedly, Kennedy adhered to “Keynesianism”) while each did just the opposite.
That said, we are in a much, much different media era where there are SO many ads, tweets, comments, news conferences. In fact, that is why Trump has succeeded. He understood before anyone else that no one comment, or even a few, can sink you anymore because of the 24-7 news cycle. All you had to do was stay in front of it, like a surfer on top of the wave. As long as he’s in the right spot, he goes all the way to the beach!